Seminar in International Economics: Predicting Exporters with Machine Learning (Online event)

The Competence Centre for International Economics Research (FIW) kindly invites to participate in the Seminar in International Economics on the topic

Predicting Exporters with Machine Learning (Online event)

Armando Rungi
(IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca)

Thursday, 4th of March 2021, 3:00 p.m. (CET)

Registration link:
https://wiiw.ac.at/predicting-exporters-with-machine-learning-online-event-er-503.html
This is an online event via Zoom. Please register for the dial-in link, reminders and e-mail updates. The dial-in link will be sent to you shortly before the event.

Description:
The presentation is based on a paper with the same title co-authored with Francesca Micocci.

In this contribution, we exploit machine learning techniques to predict a firm’s ability to export. In a pure prediction framework, we train a Bayesian Additive Regression Tree (BART) on the financial accounts of 57,021 manufacturing firms in France in the period 2010-2018. We obtain a relatively high accuracy of prediction, with a precision-recall at 0.91. Then, we show how predictions could be of help in assessing a firm-level exporting score, i.e., the distance of a firm from export status. We argue our exporting score has the potential to inform target-specific and evidence-based policies of internationalization.

The seminar series is organised by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) in co-operation with FIW, the Centre of Competence in International Economics. The seminar provides a forum for presentation and discussion of recent academic research in the field of international economics.